Present laughter

I liked John McCormack's explanation of one of the reasons he enjoys working at The Dispatch:

On a personal level, what I missed most about The Weekly Standard was all the laughter that filled that office. It may seem like a small thing, but I’ve found that producing political journalism (especially when the state of our national politics is bleak) is much more enjoyable when you can laugh with your friends and colleagues about the many absurdities of politics, journalism, and daily life. Those are interactions that can’t be perfectly replicated in a Slack channel or a Zoom call, so it feels good to be back seeing colleagues, at least a couple days a week, in person.

That reminded me of Michael Oakeshott on being conservative:

To be conservative, then, is to prefer the familiar to the unknown, to prefer the tried to the untried, fact to mystery, the actual to the possible, the limited to the unbounded, the near to the distant, the sufficient to the superabundant, the convenient to the perfect, present laughter to utopian bliss.